By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

FARMERS say that they continue to face issues with obtaining financing - with a number of obstacles in their path.

Cindy Pinder, owner of Abaco Big Bird Poultry Farm, said accessing financing for her business is “impossible”.

She said that the past five years have been “hard” due to obstacles such as Hurricane Dorian, the pandemic and a chicken shortage that exhausted her businesses capital, and that accessing funding from lending institutions has been difficult due to them only offering cash-secured loans.

She said: “Getting financing is impossible, everything they want is cash-secured.

“We were completely out of business after Hurricane Dorian. We started to rebuild from Dorian and COVID hit, which slowed down tremendously. And then we were just ready to get back on our feet, we’ve had a worldwide shortage of chicken so we’ve struggled through that and we’re just trying, again to grow our market and expand but capital problems… it’s been a really hard five years but we’re moving forward.”

She said she needs access to funding to replace equipment and continue the installation of a solar power generation system so that she can reduce her electricity bill which increased by almost $5,000.

She said: “My backhoe broke down many months ago and I took it to a mechanic here so that they can fix it. He hasn’t fixed it, he took it apart and now there’s nobody fixing my backhoe and I don’t have money to buy a new one.

“Every day, I need a backhoe desperately, I can’t borrow money for that. I’m trying to put in solar. I got partial government grant, and I need money for the rest of it.

“Power bills went up almost $5,000 a month for the last eight or ten months so all my excess capital went into my power bill.”

She said that her business is “cash strapped” as the financial institution that she did business with for 30 years has her land papers and took her credit card.

She said: “We did business with one bank for 30 years, had paid off probably millions in loans and overdrafts and we had to have our land papers released. They took away my $15,000 credit card I can’t have a credit card with them anymore, because I don’t have my land papers.

“I don’t have an overdraft, I don’t have a credit card, so I’m cash strapped, it’s terrible.”

Jane Braynen, owner of HomeAway Farm, said it is difficult for her to obtain the funds necessary to employ sufficient labour.

She explained she has tried to expand her coconut and banana farm into other produce and even pig farming but was unsuccessful due to the market.

She said: “With resources we always need all types of things, but I find that mostly I need labour. I don’t find it hard to find them but that just comes with money. If I had a payroll of $3,000 my farm would have been right where I wanted so it’s not finding labourers so much as having to pay them.

“We are just a small level farm and our lease is based on coconut. We have hundreds of coconuts planted on our farm, which I lease as coconut farm and banana. We did go into the vegetable planting part of it, but we were unsuccessful, we even went into pigs and we were unsuccessful because of the market and who you sell your products to. “

Lincoln Deal, owner of Eeden Farms indoor hydroponics farm, said farmers have “struggled” to access funding and noted the level of funding needed for each venture differs significantly.

He said: “Historically farmers have struggled and are still struggling to raise capital for various types of products, whether you’re in livestock farming, aquaculture, hydroponics, whatever it is, it is difficult.

“The next issue is the level of funding, the type of funding that is needed goes beyond the small grants and depending on the scale and the size, the needs are quite significant. So we just want to ensure that we’re not just providing funding, but we’re providing enough funding for a lot of these farmers to really get their projects off the ground and take off.”

He said while many traditional farms face difficulties obtaining staff due to disinterest in the sector, many young people are gravitating to careers in technology-based agriculture.

He said: “Some of the traditional farmers do have issues finding people interested in farming, especially the younger generation in in, you know, full time, staffing opportunities. It’s been hard over the years convincing mainly young people to look at agriculture as an alternative career, or as something sustainable for them.

“But in our case, we’re finding that a lot of young people are actually leaning into agriculture because it looks different. And the types of jobs are actually different in what we’re providing, because there are new jobs being created in the tech sector is what we call it because it’s agrotech. We’re emerging technology with agriculture and so they’re actually new opportunities for careers in agriculture.”

Mr Deal said that the Bahamas agriculture industry needs “continuous funding” in order to develop into a sector that is self-sufficient.

He said: “Food security should continue to be a priority especially as the world continues to change. There’s wars and rumours of wars and pandemics and things of that nature. The reality is at any given moment the US or whomever we import most of our produce from can say at any point that we can’t ship to The Bahamas so we want to become a bit more self-sustaining and self-sufficient.

“We need continuous funding in the sector because the reality is we have a $1 billion food imports bill. And we need everyone on board right so that even farms and the other farms that are currently existing are still not enough to really make a dent in the market. We need to encourage more farmers, we need to encourage more entrepreneurship in farming and agriculture and we need to promote more of the career opportunities in agrotech and in agriculture in general.”